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American Heart

My spirits are still aloft three hours after finishing Laura Moriarty's book American Heart. You may have heard about all the flak she has taken for the book and about the censored review—a review written by a Muslim woman of color—pulled after pressure from people who feared the book represented another white savior narrative because its admittedly flawed white teenage protagonist commits to seeing a woman to safety in an America—not very unlike our own—that has put all Muslims like this woman in an internment camp in Nevada. This is a Muslim woman, I might add, who has stayed in America even after her husband and son fled to Canada because she had hoped to outlast the virus of fear spreading the country, had hoped to stay in a teaching job at a university where she could help students learn not only about engineering but also about how to conquer their own fears of difference, had hoped to stay in a country that had become her home. The book is as much about her as it is about its white protagonist. American Heart ultimately heralds two good people doing the right thing at great personal risk. Recommended by Kelly